WILLIAMS RACES TO ALLEN VICTORY
11/12/2007 18:43:00

Mark Williams gave a clear sign of a return to form by winning eight consecutive frames to beat Mark Allen at the Maplin UK Championship.
Williams has suffered the worst slump of his career over the past year, failing to win a knockout match in a ranking event during that period and falling to 40th in the provisional rankings.

But, re-united with coach Terry Griffiths, he has shown glimpses of his best this week in a 9-3 defeat of Ricky Walden and today's performance against young Ulsterman Allen.

Williams trailed 5-1 in yesterday's first session but recovered to 5-3 overnight, then reeled off six more frames today to set up a quarter-final clash with Stephen Maguire or Ian McCulloch.

The Welshman, who has won each of snooker's 'big three', the UK, World and Masters, on two occasions, took the first two frames today with runs of 47 and 48.

Allen had a chance to snatch the next but played a poor positional shot from blue to pink, then potted the pink but had to play safe on the black. Williams slotted home a fine long pot to go ahead for the first time.

That broke Allen's resistance and he scored just 25 points in the last three frames as left-hander Williams rolled in 54, 52 and 78.

"At the start of the day I wanted to win three of the first four to get to 6-6, I knew that would put Mark under pressure," said Williams. "I managed to win all four and he started to miss a few balls.

"At the start of the match he reminded me of myself about ten years ago, running around the table without a care in the world. It's a long time since I had a fight-back like that.

"I don't worry too much about the rankings myself but my mates keep telling me I'll be on the Challenge Tour next season. I want to get into the top 32 provisionally so if I had lost here I would have been in trouble."

Shaun Murphy also enjoyed a run-away victory today, pulling away from 5-3 to beat Stuart Bingham 9-3.

Rotherham's Murphy, who trailed 3-1 yesterday, enjoyed runs of 67, 73, 53 and 62 today as he earned a tie with Ding Junhui.

"A couple of years ago, I might not have stuck it out in the first session, but these days my game isn't all about attack," said Murphy, who is hoping to stretch his lead at the top of the provisional rankings.

"I'm very pleased with the way things are going, over the past ten months I've been to at least the quarter-finals of every tournament except Shanghai. I don't think my game is quite good enough to win the tournament at the moment, but if I can keep improving I could be here on Sunday."

Ding, UK champion two years ago, crucially came from 47-0 down against Nigel Bond to win the last frame of the opening session to stand 4-4 overnight. After losing the first frame today, the Chinese ace took five on the spin with 63, 56, 59, 80 and 100.